Wow, only like 5-6 years late. I'm actually shocked Google's even AWARE of all the ContentID scammers, considering how clueless they appear to be in general.

I've been stung by this too, I only noticed because I had adverts emblazoned across my videos. I didn't have any messages or emails telling me about this. I then logged into my channel and (after quite a bit of digging around in their shit UI) found that my videos were listed as containing copyrighted material.

Bear in mind, these were music videos featuring original songs created by my band. Every single part of the video was under our copyright. I filed a dispute and it took well over a month for it to get straightened out. That's over a month worth of advertising revenue that somebody got from our material.

IMO, lawyers who file false copyright strike should also get a strike, and with say 10 strikes, they should be taken away the ability to claim copyright by ContentID system.fired, out of a cannon, into a sharktank

Nostalgia Critic did a decent video recently about the fair use problem and spends a good while explaining how Youtube's system can screw over a content creator, for anyone who doesn't directly use it and is curious:

MO, lawyers who file false copyright strike should also get a strike, and with say 10 strikes, they should be taken away the ability to claim copyright by ContentID system.face an inquiry by the board of lawyers and if found guilty, disbarred from practicing at all

Can you believe the sheer audacity of this asshole, posting a vlog talking about snow? That's COPYRIGHT (somehow) and it's completely fair and balanced to let a random stranger post a claim and steal all ad revenue generated by that video. Otherwise, the terrorists win.

I've been stung by this too, I only noticed because I had adverts emblazoned across my videos. I didn't have any messages or emails telling me about this.

Yeah. They email you about community rules violations (someone clicks "Report as Spam" or whatever), but they don't email about ContentID. Perhaps if the ContentID match takes the video down, I haven't had that happen to me. (90% of my ContentID matches have been scammers, and scammers want ad revenue, not to take things offline.)

Bear in mind, these were music videos featuring original songs created by my band. Every single part of the video was under our copyright. I filed a dispute and it took well over a month for it to get straightened out. That's over a month worth of advertising revenue that somebody got from our material.

I usually just make the videos private ASAP so they don't get more than the bare minimum. Don't delete the video, YouTube can flag you because they think you're attempting to delete a video to avoid a strike.

Susan Diane Wojcicki (/woʊˈdʒɪski/ woh-JISS-kee; born July 5, 1968) is an American technology executive. She has been the CEO of YouTube since February 2014. She is from Los Altos, California, and has a net worth of $410 million.

Yeah I guess if Alphabet's a holding company, it's not too weird for YouTube to have a CEO. That also means all of YouTube engineering and such staff is divorced from Google now, also. Huh. Not sure if that's good or bad.

I usually just make the videos private ASAP so they don't get more than the bare minimum. Don't delete the video, YouTube can flag you because they think you're attempting to delete a video to avoid a strike.

Fair use is one thing, but there's no legal basis to say that YouTube shouldn't take down videos that are fair use. YT are a private entity, they can take down whatever videos they like. If it's easier and more profitable for them to just take down every video that anyone complains about, that's their call.

Presumably at some point there's a balance where concern for customer satisfaction leads them to put a certain amount of effort into it, which I guess is where the OP comes into it. But you can't claim that YT is required to let you post a particular video just because it's legal.

Now, I certainly understand why people are upset about the current process; I'm sure I would be too, if I was trying to make money off a YT channel. The fact that (as presented, anyway) someone can make an arbitrary claim and grab the money without the claim even being looked at, and keep that money even if the claim is later rejected, is horrible and extremely unfair. But that's, presumably, part of the conditions you agree to when you start a YT channel.

YT are in a bit of a bind really. It's obviously economically impractical to manually review every claim, so they have to rely on automated processes to do the vast bulk of the work. And they have to comply with the DMCA which, as I understand it, is pretty one-sided.

FWIW, I do agree that there needs to be some penalty applied to people who make false claims. If there's one thing we should have all learned by now, it's the tragedy of the commons. If filing a false claim has no serious repercussions then people will file ALL THE CLAIMS just because they can. If having a claim overturned meant a financial penalty and rate limiting on future claims, the number of frivolous claims would drop off sharply. Then it might be possible to look at some of the other issues of equity in the process.

Fair use is one thing, but there's no legal basis to say that YouTube shouldn't take down videos that are fair use. YT are a private entity, they can take down whatever videos they like. If it's easier and more profitable for them to just take down every video that anyone complains about, that's their call.

One may agree with you if taking down video with unresolved copyright claim does not count as a strike.

Remember, anytime you have 3 effective strikes (I think strikes expire after half year passed), your account will be terminated and all videos in your account will be deleted. For people who pay their bills by Ad revenue generated by videos, it mean roughly the same as you're fired without severance.

It should also cost the lawyer's job for filing falsy claims to be fair.

Remember, anytime you have 3 effective strikes (I think strikes expire after half year passed), your account will be terminated and all videos in your account will be deleted. For people who pay their bills by Ad revenue generated by videos, it mean roughly the same as you're fired without severance.

And this is why blind automatisms resulting in extreme actions are a moronic thing to implement.

And they have to comply with the DMCA which, as I understand it, is pretty one-sided.

Contentid is completely separate from DMCA. Google has persuaded most entities to use content Id instead, because there is instant pay for the claimant, and there is no repercussions. Google created this fucking mess because of the mess dmca is.
It's entirely Google's own problem, because they made it so. I don't feel sorry for them at all. (granted dmca would make other problems for them,but there are possible repercussions)

Hopefully they get better people than what they've had in the past... There was an incident a few years back where a 15 year old claiming to be from the "Australian Broddcasting Corperation" managed to get 200+ videos from The Chaser's War On Everything removed simply by filling in a DMCA form. Even provided a Hotmail address as the business contact.

Youtube didn't bother to check with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation if it was okay, even though it was and they had an agreement with Youtube that the videos were fine to be uploaded.

The problem with any sort of penalty that prevents them from making future claims is that those future claims might be valid, and if so, YouTube is legally required to let them make the claims.

If YouTube won't accept someone's valid claim because rate limiting, bad prior claims... any reason... they can get their lawyers and go after YouTube and win, because YouTube's policy is now supporting copyright infringement.

That's why I propose take away the ability to use ContentID as ground to file false claim only. I won't stop them watch the videos one by one themselves and figure out which song/video clip they found might be copying from the creation of author subscribed their service. XD

The law actually doesn't require content hosts provide tools for them to file copyright notice. Just that the lawyer persuaded the judge that YouTube and other content hosts should have ability to find out what is copyright infringing material and what is not, so they created ContentID as answer and let them judge themselves.

I don't think the judges will mind to give "a little inconvenience" to lawyers that misuse the tool.

I seem to recall that copyright holders argued (successfully) that it was entirely impractical for anyone to attempt to manually review all of the vast amount of information that's uploaded to YouTube on a continuous basis, and thus they needed some kind of automated tool to find and flag infringing videos.

Basically, if you're preventing someone from using the ContentID system to police YouTube for their own intellectual property, they have no chance in hell of successfully finding and reporting infringing videos faster than they can be uploaded.

Am I going to shed a tear for them? No. Given that they lost it because they abused it, hell no. But they could probably find a sympathetic judge somewhere.

Why not both? As @anotherusername pointed out, Youtube can't legally rate-limit claims. But they could rate-limit access to ContentID. Offer it by default, but revoke access to anyone who makes more than 3 false claims. That way, assholes can still file claims, they'll just lose access to a tool that makes it easier but which Youtube isn't required to offer.

But yeah, that would eventually still lead to a legal shitstorm. I mean, lawyers gonna lawyer, after all.

they have no chance in hell of successfully finding and reporting infringing videos faster than they can be uploaded.

Noone prevents the copyright holder to find another lawyer.

Remember, only the holder of copyright can file copyright lawsuit, and I think the supreme court already ruled "right to sue" cannot be split from copyright. Therefore the lawyer here merely is providing service to their clients (the copyright holders).

So no, as long as YouTube does not block access to ContentID system to everyone, I don't think the lawyers have ground for complaint.